According to this Monday’s presidential decree on the formation of new government, the powers of the services and agencies will be strictly subordinated the federal ministries. From now on, the ministers will be entitled to instruct both services and agencies, as well as to obstruct and annul their decisions, newspaper Vedomosti reports.
The decision will have direct consequences for the State Committee of Fisheries, which got its status as state committee only eight months ago. Under the leadership of Andrey Krainy, the Fishery Agency achieved the status upgrade to state committee, which also included a number of increased powers. Now, however, Mr. Krainy and his fishery colleagues will be back to where they started, as agency subordinated the Ministry of Agriculture.
In a comment to the Norwegian newspaper Nordlys, journalist Geir Seljeseth writes that the administrative changes in the State Fishery Committee might be the start of a major restructuring of the Russian fishery sector.
The Russian power structure with ministries, services and agencies were adopted in 2004. The structure gave both services and agencies the right to independently manage their own budgets. While the ministries have had the responsibility for overarching policies, the services were control and inspection bodies and the agencies service and implementation bodies.
With the increased powers of the ministries also follow increased powers of the government leader – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
